Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Missouri down to just one abortion business after Planned Parenthood closes

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Good news from Life News.

But first, a pretty good introduction to the abortion business:

The abortion business can be very lucrative. Planned Parenthood alone brings in over $150 millionfrom abortion revenues – as much as half of its patient charges. Planned Parenthood destroys over 330,000 unborn children every year, an abortion every 95 seconds, at roughly $468 per abortion. The abortion giant has increased its market share of abortion commerce every year for over 3 decades.

But what has made abortion so profitable has been its constitutionally privileged status and the business model that status has enabled. Unlike virtually any other medical procedure, abortion has been deemed a protected right. This has allowed Planned Parenthood and its industry competitors to resist regulation that other medical services accept as the cost of safely doing business. And by calling on their political friends in high places ( and Planned Parenthood spends millions to keep them in those places) abortion sellers are able to secure political protection from rules that would protect their patients but undercut their bottom line.

Abortion businesses are thus rarely inspected and are often constructed such that women are endangered in an emergency situation. When they are inspected, the inspectors find gross health and safety violations. And as the Gosnell case demonstrates, even their shortcuts on construction can leave women endangered in an emergency situation. Planned Parenthood has also adopted a business plan that has doctors from another state (or country in some cases) fly in, perform dozens of abortions in one day, and then fly back home – leaving the woman with no relationship with the doctor and no opportunity for the doctor to assist in her care in case of complications.

Now the good news – Republicans have been busy passing regulations on this abortion clinics:

In Missouri, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys Steven Aden and Dale Schowengerdt successfully defended the state’s health and safety regulations of abortion clinics in two challenges in state and federal court.  Our friends at 40 Days for Life and others continued to bear witness outside Missouri’s four abortion clinics.

These four were reduced to two over the next few years as providers found their abortion businesses were unprofitable and retired or closed their doors. Then, just last week we received word that, unable to comply with those reasonable health and safety standards, the Columbia, Missouri Planned Parenthood has now lost its license and closed its doors. This leaves only one licensed abortionist operating in Missouri, a Planned Parenthood franchise in St. Louis.

More good news from Alabama, this time:

In Alabama, ADF Allied Attorney Trenton Garmon successfully defended the rights of sidewalk counselors to peacefully pray outside a Birmingham abortion facility. As a result, those sidewalk counselors were there to witness an ambulance transporting an injured woman to a hospital. They reported this to the state health department which investigated and found numerous health and safety violations, resulting in the closure of that abortion facility. This week we learned that the abortionist who owns the facility has given up and placed the building up for sale.

Isn’t that interesting? Rather than comply with the regulations, they choose to shut down. It’s not about providing a service, is it? It’s about the money. And if complying with regulations costs money, then the abortionists just stop providing the service.

News

Republicans advancing pro-life legislation in red and purple states

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From Life Site News.

Excerpt:

As the media debate the reason abortions declined over the last few years, pro-life voices say the record number of new laws restricting abortion played a role. The year 2014 is already shaping up to follow the trend of substantial pro-life legislation.

Arizona

Abortion facilities will no longer receive advance notice of state inspections, if the governor signs a proposed law. The state House of Representatives passed the measure, allowing unannounced health inspections of abortion facilities, by a vote of 34-22.

Florida

A woman tricked into ingesting an abortion-inducing drug that killed her child wants legislators to make sure that never happens to another woman. Remee Jo Lee testified that, unless lawmakers pass a new statute, Florida will have no state ordinance punishing offenders who harm women the way her boyfriend hurt her, physically and emotionally. “I’m still here but a big part of me is missing,” Lee told the House Judicial Committee. “I miss my baby every single day.” The committee passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act 13-3 on Monday. It would allow prosecutors the discretion to try a criminal for a separate murder if he kills an unborn child, even if he did not know the woman was pregnant.

Oklahoma

The Oklahoma House passed a bill requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their office, by a vote of 73-9. Similar measures have closed nine abortion facilities in neighboring Texas, as well as other states where admitting privileges were allowed to be enacted. The Senate must now pass the bill.

West Virginia

Abortion restrictions inched closer to acceptance in the Mountaineer State, as the state Senate Health and Human Resources Committee approved a ban on abortions at 20 weeks. Delegate Joe Ellington, a pro-life OB/GYN and Republican, said the bill actually goes into effect 20 weeks from conception, not the way most medical specialists count weeks. Therefore, it should really be viewed as a ban on abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy. Violators could be fined $4,000. The bill then passed the Judiciary Committee. It will now go to the full state Senate for a vote.

Missouri

Women in Missouri may have more time to consider whether abortion is the right decision for them. The state House passed a bill to increase the waiting period for an abortion from 24 hours to 72 hours by a 115-37 vote on Wednesday. Nine Democrats joined the chamber’s Republican majority. It must pass the chamber a second time. However, Senate Democrats launched a filibuster against the Senate version of the bill on Wednesday.

More good news from a different Life Site News article.

Excerpt:

The ever-decreasing number of abortion clinics continues its decline with the announcement of the closing of abortion clinics in Texas, Florida, and California.

Whole Women’s Health announced this week that its surgical abortion clinics in McAllen and Beaumont have permanently closed due to the new law passed last year that requires abortion facilities to meet minimum safety requirements, including hiring only abortionists that maintain local hospital privileges. The McAllen location had “temporarily” closed in January.

Operation Rescue had lodged complaints about the Whole Women’s Health clinics in McAllen, Beaumont, and Austin after discovering they were improperly dumping “identifiable” aborted baby remains a during an undercover investigation in 2011. This led the Austin and McAllen locations to be heavily fined.

In addition, the North Florida Women’s Health & Counseling Service in Tallahassee has announced in public notices that it will be closing permanently on March 31. That surgical abortion clinic has operated continuously since 1981.

Surgical abortion clinics are not the only ones closing. Planned Parenthood’s office in Sunnyvale, California, which offered only medication abortions (RU-486) shut down in January.

“We are on track to see another great year. Every time an abortion clinic closes, lives are saved because women have a greater opportunity to seek other means of coping with the challenges they face. This is great news for women and their babies,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue.

Also out of business for good is Lester Minto’s Reproductive Services in Harlington, Texas. Minto stopped abortions in November due to the new Texas law, but continued to see abortion patients who had taken abortion pills procured in Mexico or other locations. This week he announced onMSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show that he has closed his clinic permanently and is selling his building.

Minto’s clinic joins real estate market along with the former New Women All Women abortion building in Birmingham, Alabama, which was put up for sale this week.

So far in 2014, seven surgical abortion clinics in four states have announced closure with one abortion pill clinic closing. Those states are California, Florida, Texas, and Iowa.

It seems like such a strange thing to me that some people get up and go to work, and their job is killing unborn children for money. But I guess that’s why we Republicans have to pass these laws. It’s a good signal to people that they need to be more careful about the consequences of their own behaviors. Basically, Republicans are saying to people that your freedom to do as you please ends when you brush up against someone else’s freedom, no matter how small that other person might be. At least in some states, there are people looking out for the protection of those little unborn people. Sometimes, it seems to me as if the whole world is going away from morality and personal responsibility, but then I look at this legislation and I think “at least somebody is doing something right”.

By the way, Life Site News also had a good article about how the Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is putting a stronger emphasis on pro-life voters. I think he’s probably making the case to pro-lifers that this issue matters to Republicans and that they are advancing legislation to do something to protect unborn children from adult who want to skip out on their responsibilities.

News

New study: oral contraceptives linked to higher risk of multiple sclerosis

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ECM sent me this article from Fox News about the new study.

Excerpt:

In a new study, researchers found an increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) among women who have taken oral contraceptives. However, the findings do not mean women should stop using birth control, the researchers say.

Utilizing membership data from Kaiser Permanente Southern California, researchers analyzed the health records of 305 women aged 14 to 48 who were diagnosed with MS or its precursor, clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), between 2008 and 2011.  They looked at the women’s birth control use up to three years prior to the onset of MS symptoms

Overall, researchers found a 30 percent increased risk of developing MS amongst women who had at least three months of oral contraceptive use, compared to a control group of 3,050 women who did not have MS. They found that 29.2 percent of women with MS used birth control before their diagnoses, while 23 percent of women in the healthy control group used birth control– showing an increased risk with higher use of the drug, study author Dr. Kerstin Hellwig, a post-doctoral research fellow at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

Additionally, for women who did not currently use an oral contraceptive but had in some time in the three years prior to being diagnosed, there was also a slightly higher risk.

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease affecting the central nervous system. The causes are unclear, but experts believe genetics, environmental hazards and smoking are all possible factors. The condition normally develops between ages 20 and 40, Hellwig said.

Researchers say use of birth control is not a firmly established cause for MS, but they do see a link.

“It’s not clear what role [hormones] play in the development of the disease, but it’s clear that two to three times more women than men have MS,” Hellwig said.

Previously, I blogged about studies on abortion and breast cancer.

Abortion and breast cancer

New study is up here at the National Institutes of Health web site.

Life News reported on the study here.

Excerpt:

A new study of women from India shows women who get an induced abortion are 626% more likely to have breast cancer compared with women who carry their pregnancies to term and have the baby.The study found women more likely to have breast cancer had “higher number of abortions.”

This study follows closely after a bombshell meta-analysis of breast cancer studies found a 44% increased risk of contracting breast cancer for women who had abortions.

“History of abortion was also found to be positively associated with the risk of breast cancer with 6.26 times higher risk in women having a history of abortion,” they concluded.

The doctors conducting the new study are based at the Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition Unit, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi, India. Their report, published in the Indian Journal of Cancer confirms what previous studies have shown, namely that an abortion weakens the breast’s muscle tissue in a way that makes it more susceptible to cancer.

“However, the cases had a significantly higher number of abortions (61.3%) as compared to the controls (16.3%),” they wrote. “History of abortion was also found to be positively associated with the risk of breast cancer with 6.26 times higher risk in women having a history of abortion. The history of abortions was found to be significantly higher in breast cancer cases as compared to controls, with the Relative Risk (RR) = 6.26 in women having a history of abortion.”

This is not the first study to confirm a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Abortion and breast cancer

Many studies show a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Study 1: (September 2010)

Based on the expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and HER2/neu (HER2), breast cancer is classified into several subtypes: luminal A (ER+ and/or PR+, HER2-), luminal B (ER+ and/or PR+, HER2+), HER2-overexpressing (ER-, PR-, and HER2+) and triple-negative (ER-, PR-, and HER2-). The aim of this case-control study is to determine reproductive factors associated with breast cancer subtypes in Chinese women. A total of 1,417 patients diagnosed with breast cancer in the First Affiliated Hospital, China Medical University, Shenyang, China between 2001 and 2009 and 1,587 matched controls without a prior breast cancer were enrolled.

[…]Postmenopause and spontaneous abortion were inversely associated with the risk of luminal tumors. By contrast, multiparity, family history of breast cancer and induced abortion increased the risk of breast cancer.

Study 2: (March 2010)

OBJECTIVE: To explore the risk factors of breast cancer for better control and prevention of the malignancy.

METHODS: The clinical data of 232 patients with pathologically established breast cancer were investigated in this 1:1 case-control study to identify the risk factors of breast cancer.

RESULTS: The history of benign breast diseases, family history of carcinoma andmultiple abortions were the statistically significant risk factors of breast cancer, while breast feeding was the protective factor.

CONCLUSION: A history of benign breast diseases, family history of carcinoma and multiple abortions are all risk factors of breast cancer.

And more recently, I blogged about a very recent study from China which concluded thus:

IA is significantly associated with an increased risk of breast cancer among Chinese females, and the risk of breast cancer increases as the number of IA increases. If IA were to be confirmed as a risk factor for breast cancer, high rates of IA in China may contribute to increasing breast cancer rates.

IA is, of course, induced abortion.